“Drivers must respect giveway junctions”
There seems to be a worrying trend that road rally competitors are ignoring the give-way rule, a rule that stipulates that all forward motion must cease at specified junctions.
The reason for this development is obvious, it allows crews to gain a competitive advantage. If they’re charging through junctions while their rivals are stopping, the time gained over the whole route could be huge. And this at a time when rallies are won and lost by mere seconds.
Many organisers seem to be tentative around the issue. Driving Standard Observers (DSO) and Judge of Facts tasked with observing give ways are frequently being told to hold any miscreants for a certain length of time before letting them continue.
However crews are taking their chances; 30 seconds lost after being held by a DSO can soon be made up by flying through other give ways, especially when there are typically 30 or more such junctions on a standard night event, most of them not manned. Cheats can still win, secure trophies and gain championship points.
The give way rule is not one to treat lightly: it was brought in after a fatal accident. That was in the 1970s, one can only imagine what damage would be done to the sport if such an incident happened today when social media witch hunts can be set off at the drop of a hat. The seriousness of breaching the rule is highlighted by the fact that the MSA Year Book decrees a mandatory penalty of disqualification for anyone who fails to comply. This penalty cannot be altered.
Fortunately, in recent months a number of organisers have bitten the bullet and chucked out crews, including leading competitors, for flagrant breaches of the rule. They have witnessed transgressions in person, had reports fed back from DSOS and even been provided with film evidence from spectators.
From my experience these exclusions haven’t been done with the sort of triumphalism that quite often accompanies the realisation that a competitor has fallen into a trap set by the organiser, such as when a tricky control or slot is missed, rather the disqualifications have been done with regret – “they were given enough warning” seems to have been the general attitude.
Sadly some competitors have chosen to fight such decisions, even though the rules clearly state that reports from DSO and Judge of Facts will be treated as fact and cannot be queried. This is not a rule that can treated in the same way as an attempt to get a fail or time penalty removed, it is in place because breaking it can literally be fatal, potentially both for individuals and the future of road rallying.